Epic 2014 / 2015

August 20, 2010

With the release of Facebook Places, talking to a journalist from ‘old media’ today, and lunch with a pair of bloggers, I remembered this video.

The original version made in 2004 and updated in 2005. It is set in 2015 and traces the changes in media from 1989 to 2015. Remember, this was made before Twitter, Facebook was only available to students in Harvard, broadband penetration was nothing like it is now and smart phones were not as ubiquitous as they are now. It was also two years before the launch of iPhone.

Futurology is not something you want to rely on for specifics, but it’s useful to predict trends. Half way between 2005 and 2015, it’s remarkable how on the button some of the predictions in this video are. But the point is not so much to predict the future. No one expects Amazon and Goolge to merge – although in 2004 it was not out of the question. The point is the challenge that traditional media faces from new media, changing consumer needs and tastes, what Clay Shirky describes as ‘cognative surplus’ and the availability of tools and platforms to create our own media.